BirdTrout
Namekagon River, Wisconsin
13.7 mapped river miles, draining 665 square miles, in the St Croix basin watershed. 1 USGS gauge report water temperature on it, and this page reads it.
50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands, breaking at 58, 64 and 70°F, that the app paints. Grey is water nobody has measured.
Water temperature right now
Live from the USGS — every pill above is live, so the numbers you are reading are the latest continuous readings at each gauge. Provisional and unreviewed, as all real-time data is. If that fetch cannot happen — you are offline, or the USGS is down — the pills fall back to the last value we cached, 30 September 2026, 13:46 UTC.
The pills above go to USGS. These are this site's pages for the same gauges — a thirty-day chart, the monthly means, the record, and today's reading against the five-year normal for today: 05331833.
The character of the water
Sixth-order, 33.7 feet across at the median and draining 664.97 square miles, the Namekagon is a river rather than a creek, and the stretch this site maps runs 13.7 miles of its 123.98. The whole of it lies inside the Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway — 17,652 acres of federal ground, which settles the question of where the bank is. Wisconsin DNR designates the water Class II and manages it as wild supplemented. The gauge at Leonards, at the bottom of the reach, has eight Julys on record between 2019 and 2026 and averages 65.8 °F across them, swinging 12.6 degrees; it reads the warmest water in its reach, so everything upstream of it is colder than the figure. Big Brook, eight miles long, arrives at the head at river mile 13.7, and McDermott Brook three miles above the mouth. Mosquito Brook meets the river at the junction.
Thermal classification
Each gauge carries a July mean built from its own daily record — 8 Julys, 2019–2026, measured rather than modelled. A July mean is what decides which of the four bands a stretch of water belongs to, because July is when a trout river either holds or does not.
| Reach | July mean | Band | Groundwater |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Leonards RM 13.7–0.0 |
65.8 °F | cool | moderate |
Every gauge sits at the bottom of its segment, so each number is the warm end and the water above it runs colder. ±2.42 °F on the fit.
Questions about this river
- Namekagon River fishing report — what it reads right now
- When to fish the Namekagon River — hatches, seasons and temperature
- How to get to the Namekagon River — access, parking and public land
- Namekagon River fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
Wisconsin DNR classification
Wisconsin DNR classifies this water as Class II. The management tier on those reaches is wild supplemented. This is a designation of the fishery, not the season and creel rules — those change yearly and live with the agency.
WDNR trout stream classification →
Fishable reaches
River miles are measured above the mouth, along the mapped mainstem. The reach breaks are the gauges, which is also how the temperature model divides the river.
| Reach | Miles | July mean | Access on it |
|---|---|---|---|
|
RM 13.7–0.0 down to Leonards |
94.3 | 65.8 °F | — |
0 mapped access sites on the mainstem: 0 walk-in, 0 boat or canoe launches.
USGS gauges
Every gauge on the mainstem, upstream first. Links go to the USGS monitoring-location page for the site.
-
Namekagon River at Leonards
— 05331833 · RM 0.0
248 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 43 cfs at last read
Public land on the river
2 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 20,163 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.
| Unit | Owner | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway | National Park Service | 17,652 |
| St. Croix National Scenic Riverway | state natural-resources agency | 2,511 |
Species
Wisconsin DNR designates this as trout water — Class II — without naming the species. No fish survey or stocking record for this water is in the files this site reads.
Historical July mean
The measured record behind every temperature band on this page: the mean of the daily means for July, at each gauge, over the years USGS has one.
| Gauge | July mean | July range | Julys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leonards | 65.8 °F | 12.6 °F | 8 |
Hatches on this water
42 insects are recorded from northern Wisconsin, which is the region this river sits in. That is a claim about the region and not a survey of this stream: nobody has recorded which of them has been caught here. Open the river in the app and the hatch panel will narrow it to the ones whose temperature window today's reading is inside.
| Insect | Peak | Water | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fish Eggs Other |
October–January and April | 33–60°F | #10–16 |
| Little Brown Stonefly Taeniopteryx / Strophopteryx spp. |
February–April | 38–50°F | #12–16 |
| Blue-Winged Olive Baetis spp. |
March–May and September–November | 38–58°F | #16–22 |
| Blackfly Simulium spp. |
April–June | 40–65°F | #18–22 |
| Cranefly Tipula spp. |
April–June and September–October | 40–65°F | #6–10 |
| Grannom Brachycentrus spp. |
April–May | 48–58°F | #14–16 |
| Green Rock Worm / Green Weenie Rhyacophila spp. |
April–June and September–October | 45–68°F | #10–14 |
| Hendrickson Ephemerella subvaria |
April–May | 45–58°F | #12–14 |
| Alderfly Sialis spp. |
May–June | 52–66°F | #10–14 |
| Caterpillar Lepidoptera larvae |
May–September | 55–75°F | #8–14 |
| Crayfish Orconectes spp. |
May–October | 55–78°F | #4–8 |
| Giant Black Stonefly (Salmonfly) Pteronarcys dorsata |
May–June | 50–62°F | #4–6 |
| Green Sedge Rhyacophila spp. |
May–August | 48–64°F | #12–16 |
| Light Cahill Maccaffertium ithaca |
May–July | 55–68°F | #12–16 |
And 28 more — the year-round records, mostly: midges, scuds and sculpins, which are in the water every day and are therefore never the news.
Tributaries and watershed
3 named streams meet this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.
Namekagon River sits in HUC 8 07030001, 07030002 and 07030005, the St Croix basin, and drains 665 square miles, Strahler order 6 at the mouth. 114 NHD reaches carry the name for 124.0 miles in total — more than the 13.7 miles of drawn mainstem, because NHD counts side channels and braids as their own reaches.
Other water nearby
The closest 6 rivers on this site, straight-line from the middle of this one — not drive time.